Publication in BibTeX Format

@TECHREPORT{AICPub482:1990,
AUTHOR={Pereira, Fernando and Pollack, Martha E.},
TITLE={Incremental Interpretation},
ADDRESS={333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025},
INSTITUTION={AI Center, SRI International},
MONTH={May},
NUMBER={490},
YEAR={1990},
KEYWORDS={Natural Language!Interpretation!Incremental, Natural Language!Context,
CANDIDE},
ABSTRACT={We present a system for the incremental interpretation of natural-language
utterances in context. The main goal of the work is to account for the influences
of context on interpretation, while preserving compositionality to the extent
possible. To achieve this goal, we introduce a representational device, conditional
interpretations, and a rule system for constructing them. Conditional interpretations
represent the potential contributions of phrases to the interpretation of an
utterance. The rules specify how phrase interpretations are combined and how
they are elaborated with respect to context. The control structure defined
by the rules determines the points in the interpretation process at which sufficient
information becomes available to carry out specific inferential interpretation
steps, such as determining the plausibility of particular referential connections
or modifier attachments. We have implemented these ideas in Candide, a system
for interactive acquisition of procedural knowledge.}
}